Propanediol is mainly used as a building block in the production of polymers. There are several industrialized processes for the production of propanediol. One of the newly developed processes involves hydrogenolysis of sugar alcohol, such as sorbitol. This process produces a desired product, propanediol, as well as a waste stream containing various oxygenates. In the interest of increasing the yield of value-added products from biomass, it would be beneficial to discover useful processes for converting this waste stream to value-added commercial products.